


heirlooms

by impeachring



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 21:22:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17926598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impeachring/pseuds/impeachring
Summary: you’re 5 years old, and your father is your hero.baelfire character study





	heirlooms

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this a long time ago and just found it again so go easy on me :)  
> also sorry if the ages are wrong

You’re 5 years old, and your father is your hero.  
No one else ever seems to feel the same way about him, but that’s okay because he’s brilliant and kind and funny and he always does voices when he reads you bedtime stories. You don’t think your mother likes him (or you) very much at all. But you don’t mind, especially because you know how hard your father tries to keep you from noticing. You may not be rich, or have very many friends, but you’re happy. You don’t know that this is as good as it'll get for a very long time. 

You’re 8 years old, and your father is all you have.  
Your mother is dead but you can’t help thinking she’s probably happier now than she was when she lived with you. You know your father doesn’t have much money, and that work is hard to come by nowadays, but he always makes sure that you want for nothing. After all, the only thing you really want is him, alive and safe and happy. He says he wants the same for you. But the ogre wars grow worse and worse, and each passing year the child soldiers taken from their homes are closer to your age. Your father says he’ll figure something out, that you won’t end up an unwilling soldier like he did. You don’t ask about his leg. You don’t think you want to know.

You’re 12 years old, and your father is a monster.  
Except not really, because he’s still your father and he still loves you and cares for you just as much as he did before. He just looks strange, and everyone else in the village runs from him and forbids their children to play with you. Your father says you’re the only one who knows the truth, who understands why he had to do what he did. You know it was to save you. You wonder sometimes if it was worth it. If it wouldn’t have been better to become a soldier, to die a hero on the battlefield, knowing at least as you took your last breath that you had tried to rid the world of evil instead of adding more darkness. You wonder sometimes if that’s what your father thinks he did by taking on the curse. You wonder sometimes what your life would be like if everything was different. You wonder a lot, about a lot of things, but everything seems to stay the same. 

You’re 16 years old, and you think you can solve everything.  
You have a plan, and you’re going to grab the world by its throat and force it to give your father back. You just might have to do the same to him. You see the familiar fear and reluctance in his eyes, but you also see desperation hidden by darkness and a gold sheen. You are going to throw yourself into the unknown for him because whatever comes next has to be better than this. And besides, once you land in the other realm he’ll know what to do. He always does. 

You’re still 16 years old, and you’re alone.  
You’ve been both of these things for longer than you can count without feeling like you’re going crazy. Every night you dream of your father coming to rescue you. In these dreams, his eyes are brown and his skin is pale and he walks with a limp but he looks like the biggest hero you’ve ever seen. Every morning you wake up in a cave with tears already stinging your eyes and curse yourself for being naive enough to think he would come back for you. Eventually, you just get sick of it. Sick of waiting, and hiding, sick of looking at Peter Pan’s cruel smile and seeing your father grinning back. So you take your life into your own hands and you claw your way out of hell tooth and nail. You are your own hero. You don’t dream anymore.

You’re 17 (and 19 and 21 and 26 and) your father is a villain in your story and everybody else’s.  
Except in their stories, he’s a little imp with a funny name who tries to steal a child. And in your story, he’s a slightly bigger imp with an equally funny name who throws a child down a portal and leaves him to die. Same difference, really. You’re alone all the time now, and you never quite manage to fit into this world with cars and lights and skyscrapers. But you make do. On the days when everything is terrible and you just want to go home- they’re becoming less frequent, but they do happen- you just remind yourself that there are no lost boys or dark ones in New York City. Sometimes you wonder why that never seems to make you feel any better.

You’re 28 and you don’t think about him anymore (except when you do).  
Instead, you think about the girl robbing convenience stores with you, and about Tallahassee. You think about Tallahassee a lot, even before you know what it means.  
She looks like a future that you haven't dared to dream about for a long time. It takes you a while, but eventually you can read a fairy tale without feeling sick to your stomach. You think maybe you could be happy here. You think maybe you finally could stop running. Life, as usual, has other plans.

You’re 38 and you’re a father yourself.  
He’s the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen, a mixture of your face and Emma’s shining with the sort of stubborn optimism only a kid can have. You stand on a fire escape with him, looking out over the city that you made into your home, and think about how every bad thing that ever happened to you led to his existence, and how it might almost have been worth it. You think about daggers, and gold, and castles on fire. You think about how you’ve known him for a matter of minutes and the idea of abandoning him is already unimaginable. You try not to think about your father, who is standing in your apartment looking polished and refined and desperate, who is begging and pleading with you to give him another chance. You try not to give him another chance. You watch him bleeding out, drag him back to some stupid town in Maine where some of the people almost seem to give a shit about him, and try not to give him another chance. You listen to him tell his girlfriend how much he loves her, throw up in your mouth a little, and try not to give him another chance. You hold his shaking hands as he tells you he loves you and that he’s sorry. You remember Neverland, remember the Darlings, remember the look on his face as the portal sealed up behind you. You remember a childhood where he was the center of your world. You give him another chance. 

You’re 40 years old and your father is your hero.  
You think finally other people might just feel the same way, and that’s amazing. You’re also dying in his arms, which is decidedly less amazing. But you’ve spent centuries running, losing yourself and your father and the only woman you ever loved, only to find them and lose them again and again. You look up at the home and the family you created, against all odds. You close your eyes. You stop running.


End file.
